An accidental semester at Hebrew University

Students evacuated from Cairo during the January 25 revolution reflect on their roller-coaster time in Israel.

The irony of being evacuated from Cairo to Jerusalem because of safety concerns,
only to be faced shortly thereafter with a bus bombing in central Jerusalem, is
not lost on Penelope Shepherd.

“I remember when I heard about the bus
bombing, I immediately worried about my parents... They went through a lot when
I was in Cairo between not having a way to contact me during some of the most
dangerous days of protesting and calling me in the middle of the night only to
find out that I could hear looters and gunshots in the distance. The last thing
that they needed was to hear that there was a bus bombing.

Shepherd, a
21-year-old undergraduate at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania and a New York
native, was enrolled in a study abroad program at the American University of
Cairo when she and 11 other students were evacuated during the rioting in early
February and given refuge at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

A little
over a month later, a bus bombing rocked their newfound home, killing a
59-yearold British woman and wounding more than 30 others.

Shepherd said
that after the bombing she cast away her reluctance to take Jerusalem’s public
transportation. “I certainly had no qualms with riding the bus after I heard
about the bombing. If Israelis can face the danger and not allow terrorism to
interfere with their lives, then I can too.”

At the Hebrew University in
February, Shepherd recalled how one night a mob in Cairo had accused her and her
friends of being Israeli spies, and how on other occasions they listened to the
sounds of looting nearby. In addition, she said she was taken aback by what she
said were the racist attitudes she encountered from Israelis in her initial days
in the country.

Their study abroad program came to a close on
Thursday.

Shepherd took the time to describe how the experience of
becoming an accidental study abroad student in Jerusalem has been memorable,
with its share of ups and downs.

“My semester in Jerusalem has been a
roller-coaster ride: one minute I hate it here the next I love it. There’s
always something new to learn from the people here, but I became very weary of
political debate, especially regarding Israel, because sometimes it seemed like
the only thing people wanted to ask you about as an outsider,” she
said.

“What I missed most about Egypt was that everyday was an adventure
because it is so different from what I’m used to, while here often times it felt
like I was in Europe, which is not what I was aiming for in my study abroad
experience.”

She said that as an outside, non-Jewish student in a study
abroad program in Jerusalem she didn’t run into any hostility from her fellow
students, though she felt that there was a climate that left out people like
her.

“The worst thing was probably the exclusionary atmosphere that I
sometimes ran into especially in Jerusalem since I am not Jewish. My friend and
I call it the three questions – “What’s your name? Where are you from? Are you
Jewish?” And sometimes that third question can end the
conversation.”

Still, living in Israel, even for a short time, did have
an effect on Shepherd. She said that the moment of silence on Remembrance Day
was “very moving. I was on the bus and when all of Jerusalem stopped I just
remember thinking that Americans need to learn this kind of respect for everyone
in the history of our country that has made a sacrifice to maintain our
freedoms. I was especially moved because my brother is serving in Afghanistan
and every day I worry that one day the moment of silence might be for
him.”

Also, she said that being in Jerusalem has taught her the virtue of
not picking a side when observing an intractable conflict.

“Living here
definitely gave me a different perspective on the conflict and changed the way I
feel about it. I have met so many wonderful Israelis who hate Palestinians, and
awesome Palestinians that hate Israelis, and I’ve realized that the two will
never get along, but that taking a side certainly doesn’t help the two achieve
peace. So after three months in Israel I’ve become neutral on the subject, and I
think that’s the best place to be.”

Jeremy Hodge, a 22-year-old Jewish
Los Angeles native, said this week that while he had been sad to leave Cairo,
“overall I enjoyed it [Jerusalem] a lot, and although I probably would have
preferred to stay in Cairo, I do not regret coming here and really enjoyed
myself. The other students and I who got evacuated from Cairo all became very
close and it wasn’t long before we became known around campus as ‘the Cairo
kids.’” Hodge has been interning as a research assistant at the Harry S. Truman
Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University, where he has
helped translate archived articles from the Arab press for a book that institute
fellow Hillel Cohen is writing on the 1929 Arab riots.

Hodge had some
complaints about the “very weak” level of Arabic classes that he enrolled in at
Hebrew U, following three years of Arabic study in the United States and
fulltime language classes at the American University of Cairo’s Arabic Language
Institute, and about Hebrew U’s restrictions on students’ travel to the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip, which he said made it difficult to work on his
Arabic.

He also said he missed the camaraderie he had with study abroad
students in Egypt.

“Obviously the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a very
polarizing issue, and as a result people who choose to study in an Arab country
are going to be different in many ways from those who choose to study in Israel.
Although I wouldn’t label what the Cairo kids encountered as outright hostility,
some elements of the student body here at Hebrew University speculated
(sometimes in a negative light) about our motivations for coming to the Middle
East and where our sympathies lie, often times in a way that caused us to feel
like we had to defend ourselves in ways that became tiring. Being surrounded by
more like-minded individuals in Cairo was one thing I think we all missed,” he
said.

Hodge said he never felt threatened in Israel, though like Shepherd
he was struck by the randomness of political violence inside Israel, the way it
can strike without warning.

“In my opinion, even during the revolution
Cairo was a safer place, as staying inside and avoiding certain neighborhoods
was a pretty good guarantee of safety, whereas in Israel, you can literally be
blown up in what is considered an upscale safe area without having any way of
knowing or preparing for it ahead of time. The extent to which this random
violence is applicable to everyone here, even relatively protected study abroad
students, is emphasized by the fact that the woman who died in the recent
bombing [near] the Jerusalem central bus station was a student at the Rothberg
Institute of Hebrew University; several of my friends had class with her. It
could have very well as easily been me or someone I was close to who died
instead of her.”

Unlike Shepherd, Hodge was familiar with many aspects of
Israeli culture and Judaism, but still he found himself learning how different
the Israeli experience is from that of American Jews.

“Living in
Jerusalem really exposed me in a way that only living here can as to how living
in a constant state of war affects your train of thought and how one conducts
one’s life. I really began to notice that there is in fact a difference between
American Jews and Israelis. For example, I remember the day after the central
bus station bombing I was in a bank which had Jewish and Arab
customers.

Although I do not consider myself a racist person, in fact on
the contrary, one who sympathizes very much with Palestinian calls for
self-determination in addition to other issues regarding the Arab world, I
remember thinking that it was odd that Arabs could be allowed to openly mix with
Jews in such public places 24 hours after a terrorist attack occurred which was
rooted entirely in hatred between those two groups.

“I caught myself
immediately, and rationally reminded myself as to why this was obviously the
case, that to segregate Arabs and Jews would be racist and morally
wrong.

However, this was probably the first time in my life where my gut
reaction and biological need to preserve my own safety so strongly contradicted
my morals and ideals in a way that caused me, even for a split second, to go
back on what I believe.”

Hodge said that while being in Jerusalem “didn’t
really overturn any pre-conceived ideas I had regarding Israel, it absolutely
shed light, in a more emotional, entirely nonacademic way, as to why and how the
conflict has gotten where it has.”

Sites Of Interest

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